Dear Miss Exter,
I’m assuming certain Spottiswoodes are not active voxpronoia readers, so I will respond publicly to your recent comment. And to start this letter, without your permission, I will publish an incredible email you sent to a few chosen friends (among which I am proud to say I belong), about your back-to-school teaching experiment.
“hey…so i got loopy last night trying to think of something
memorable this year for the first day of real classes (today)
and i ended up with a little performance art moment! i had the
tables in a circle and all of the little ninth graders around
the outside, turned the lights off so it was mellower, then
without saying anything rolled out a huge copy of the
constitution on the floor, anchored it down with different
american history textbooks, sat down on it as if it was a towel
at the beach, put on my sunglasses, turned on that dead prez
song about eating health food, started reading the bible,
fumbled around for a bookmark which turned out to be a dollar
bill so i could go into my bag for the bag of chips and jar of
salsa i bought which i then started eating while reading the
bible, spilled salsa on the
constitution and wiped it off with the dollar bill, then finally
pulled a cigarette and lighter out of my pocket, put the
cigarette in my mouth absentmindedly while reading the bible,
lit the lighter…
then i looked up and welcomed them to the class from the floor.
he he. it was pretty funny, and i think i got them. (the idea
was that every object symbolized an angle of studying american
history)… we started with the cigarette as an example of big
business, slave labor and addictive crops grown in the south and
latin america (sugar, coffee, cocaine, etc).
if my next email is that they fired me, you’ll know why.”
Wow oh wow, those children are so lucky to have you. I can’t begin to tell you how incredible and subversive I think you are. You’re a gift for their souls (oh, and the wrapping paper is really nice too). I’ve been wondering how I’d share my vision of the world to Clarisse without being boring or scary. There you have it. I’ll invite you to spread your subversive self on the floor of her brain…
Back to your comment, then, which expressed the possibility that my non-whining and non-complaining might affect (positively) certain potential pregnancies in waiting. I take it that all this is inspiring you to procreate. Hey, lady, Clarisse needs little cousins in NYC, for one, and if you and the English gentleman don’t produce offspring, nobody deserves to, ha!
What strikes me as hysterical is that one of my first Spottiswoode memories was during a Fez gig. The band played this incredible song about all these moments and things you do in life and how when all this is done and there is nothing worth living anymore, then it’s time to have children. And, well, these were days of wildness and anarchy, when I deeply felt that having children was a selfish delusional mediocre way to pretend you’d done something with your life and to reassure yourself that you had found love ( which I believed was a governmental Hollywood conspiracy anyway, designed to steer humans away from politics). Hence, I felt a deep connection with this song, and the man behind it. I think I even told him after the show that the song had really spoken to me. Tee hee hee.
Now, of course, all this feels like a million years ago. People who have great sex a strong solid ego and who are filled with love for the world and hope for mankind should procreate. The world is bleak in so many ways that little pooping humans with no agenda can only add light and joy the Universe. And after years of denying the biological me, giving the mental me the preference, well, I think I’ll give simplicity and joy some credit…
Let’s gauge how certain Spottiswoodes would make freakishly amazing out of this world dads. Go have insane sex, make a shining star out of all the chaos. Clarisse can’t wait to go visit her cousins in the big city.
Mad Love,
M-N